


and they all collide.

by wearethewitches



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Endgame Fix-It, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Nebula (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-04-07 20:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19092952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethewitches/pseuds/wearethewitches
Summary: ‘What if we don’t survive?’ FRIDAY asks.“We will,” Nebula says, voice clear and determined. They do not need all of the gems: just one.-Nebula will not see Tony Stark die for nothing. So, she takes the Time Stone and changes the past, one conversation at a time.





	1. Chapter 1

Part of her will always regret what she is about to do. Her regret takes the shape of a little girl who calls her _Auntie ‘Ebula_ and traces the burnished orange edge of her head casing with unblinking, awe-filled eyes. Morgan Stark – her niece, or sister as she sometimes calls her, in the privacy of her own mind.

Tony Stark, Iron Man, did not deserve the death thrust upon him.

Neither does he deserve to have his family taken away from him, however. Nebula handles the Gauntlet, tracing the burned red edges that turn to black. Downloaded into her data-core, FRIDAY at her side is quiet, programming humming at the edges of her brain like an insect, constantly crawling over her skin.

 _‘What if we don’t survive?’_ FRIDAY asks.

“We will,” Nebula says, voice clear and determined. They do not need all of the gems: just one. Her nails dig into the casing surrounding the Time Stone and it pops out far too easily. The nanotech is dead and even as she sets the piece of Iron Man armour down, the empty circle where the Time Stone crumbles slightly.

The Time Stone glows a soft, poisonous green. Nebula closes her fist and the light spills out between her closed fingers.

Power surges. FRIDAY batters down the hatches of their shared brain-space, turning off pain-centres and disconnecting everything but motor-control. Still, the Time Stone wriggles its way into her brain and she imagines a portal to a time before the Guardians – before Terra invited universal wars to their doorstep when they defeated the Chitauri.

 _We cannot go where we wish to._ Nebula thinks of her younger self, chasing Gamora and the Power Stone across the stars. She will not interfere anywhere else other than Terra; the timeline is too unpredictable, otherwise. _Take me there. I will leave you behind,_ she thinks to the Time Stone.

In front of her, like green fire, a circular portal bursts into existence. FRIDAY, absent from the Avengers Compound, does not set off the alarms that follow – automated procedures that Stark set up before introducing his precious AI to the system make speakers wail and lights flash red.

The Time Stone shakes. Or maybe it is her hand.

 _‘You have to leave the Time Stone behind,’_ FRIDAY states, voice worried and knowing. _‘Nebula, when you drop it, the portal will close. You may not have enough time to-’_

“I know,” Nebula interrupts her, staring at the world beyond. Terrans like Quill in shades of brown and washed-out pink scatter back and scream; they can clearly see her, on the other side of the portal. One brave one steps _forwards_ , reaching out. There is a young boy at her side, staring in awe. He is familiar, somehow.

Nebula steps through the portal, turning sideways and leaving her arm behind, elbow cutting off in a series of sparks and whines. FRIDAY deactivates her arm entirely, leaving it to hang free.

The brave soul steps backwards, eyes full of fear.

“I’m looking for Tony Stark,” Nebula snaps at her. The Terran, with her long brown hair and blue eyes behind her glasses, blinks and swallows, holding onto her charge with sudden intensity.

“Are- are you a robot from outer-space?”

“I’m a time traveller, too,” Nebula snarks, before FRIDAY becomes alert in her mind, two arrows with lines and a name appearing in her line of sight, pointing at the woman and her boy.

_MAY PARKER, AGE 47.2_

_PETER PARKER (SPIDERMAN), AGE 10.5_

“What- what do you want?” the young Peter Parker asks her, voice curious behind his stutters. “Did he create you?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Nebula says, thinking about FRIDAY in her data-core and how the person she is now has been influenced by the Tony Stark of her time.

They spent weeks aboard a ship together and Nebula had come and gone from Terra for five years after that, cradled his daughter in her arms and sat down for conversation with his wife in their lakeside home. Tony became part of her life, taught her new definitions of words and actions – he was a father that Thanos never was.

Peter Parker is a child, here and now. Nebula knows how much he will – he _can_ – mean to her Stark. His eyes shift to her broken arm and there are flashes from the crowd. Cameras. The woman, May Parker, squeezes Peter’s hand in her own tightly, the other grasping the handles of a shopping bag.

“Do you know your way around? If you head towards the new Stark Industries tower being constructed in Manhattan, I’m sure he’ll find out you’re there.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Nebula says, stepping forwards. May and Peter stand their ground, as do many of the Terrans – _New Yorkers,_ FRIDAY supplies – in their ring around her. If anything, the ring becomes smaller. “Would you accompany me there?”

“I- we have to get home,” May says, glancing at her nephew.

“I can accompany you to your residence to drop off the boy. Then you can lead me to Stark’s new tower,” Nebula says flatly, in no mood to be separated from the sole link to Tony that she’s discovered in this time period.

Peter himself tugs on May’s arm. “Can we? Can we Aunt May, please? Her arm’s broken, Uncle Ben can try fixing it! I could help!”

“Peter,” May whispers, harried and scared. Nebula hisses at a New Yorker who gets too close, swiping their phone with her only working hand and looking at the screen.

FRIDAY seems unusually displeased. _‘Apple,’_ she says in disgust, before Nebula feels her reaching out with a wireless signal, connecting to the device. The screen turns white, before line after line of coding runs through it.

“What are you doing?” a Terran asks her.

“I’m not doing anything. I’ve got one of Stark’s AI’s in my brain. She’s doing whatever,” Nebula says, looking away from the phone and squeezing it tight in her grasp. May still looks unconvinced. Nebula huffs. “Your name is May Parker. You’re forty-seven and the boy is your nephew, Peter Parker, age ten. I never got the pleasure of meeting him until very recently.”

Yesterday. She had met him yesterday, during the Battle when all those who died in the Decimation were returned. She’d walked with other female warriors, a line of defence against Thanos and his minions with Spiderman at her back, taking the Infinity Gauntlet to where it needed to go. They’d barely exchanged two words – but Tony had grieved him for all those five years and not even Morgan could heal the hole left behind with his passing.

May startles at her words. “You know me?”

“In passing,” Nebula says. “Can we go, now?”

“…yes,” May looks around, uncomfortable at the attention now being given to them by the surrounding New Yorkers. She pulls her nephew’s hood up over his head, tugging it over his eyes and Nebula feels guilty, briefly, that his privacy might be broken this way. “Follow me,” she orders.

Nebula joins them as they walk up the street. People stare, following her with their eyes and as soon as she can, she steals an item of clothing from the nearest open stall, baring her teeth at the vendor who disagrees with her methods. The garment is a ‘hoodie’, something she’s worn before when in want for something warm on Terra, the colour a brighter blue than her skin with _I HEART NYC_ printed in white across the front.

“How do I know you?” Peter asks her as they walk through the borough.

Nebula grunts. FRIDAY is taking up a part of her processing power to stay connected to the phone; her concentration is lacking.

“Stark. You were close.”

“Really? How?”

 _‘Internship,’_ FRIDAY directs her to say. Peter’s eyes widen at her answer and there’s a flurry of questions, mostly yes/no, about robotics, AIs, Stark Industries and the Iron Man suit. FRIDAY helps her answer them all. No, he doesn’t get his own Iron Man suit. Yes, he has his own AI. No, he doesn’t go to MIT. Yes, he does go to school. No, he doesn’t live with him. Yes, his aunt likes Tony Stark and changes her mind about him being a bad influence, eventually.

“And what about Uncle Ben? He thinks Tony Stark is _great!_ What does he think about my internship?”

There’s an error message as FRIDAY messes up her coding. Nebula tilts her head, glancing at the phone where it’s frozen. Not a single new digit is being typed.

“Miss Robot?”

Nebula forces herself to focus. She looks at Peter’s innocent face. Nebula remembers one of Tony’s original descriptions of Peter. A boy with powers and a genius intellect; a boy whose parents and uncle died, leaving him and his aunt alone.

“My name is Nebula. Your uncle was deceased long before your internship began.”

Horror. May stumbles, nearly falling over. The three stop in the street, Peter speechless and May staring at Nebula in terror.

“Ben- Ben _what?_ No- no, he can’t be dead before Peter hits _college_ ,” May says, putting a hand to her mouth. Peter looks suddenly teary-eyed.

“Uncle Ben dies?”

“I don’t know how,” Nebula admits, “though Friday might. She provided me the answers to your questions.”

“How does he die?” Peter asks and FRIDAY supplies her the answer without meaning to. But she speaks to Nebula, before she can say it aloud.

_‘Not everything is appropriate for children to know.’_

Nebula dithers. Peter’s voice breaks. “Nebula?”

“…I will not inform you how,” she says, voice gentle. It’s the same voice she uses when speaking to Rocket about the past – the same voice she uses when Morgan is supposed to be going to bed. “It would be cruel. I am here to change things. You shall not grieve for someone who is not dead.”

Nebula takes the bag of groceries from May Parker’s white-knuckled grip.

“Lead us to your home.”

May’s mouth opens and closes, like she wants to say something. Eventually, it simply shuts and her arm wraps around Peter’s shoulders.

They walk on.


	2. Chapter 2

Ben Parker is younger than his wife by approximately fourteen point nine years. The difference is strange to Nebula, who is used to longer-lived species than Terrans; May has stray silver hairs and wrinkled skin, while Ben is young and _fresh_ , as it were. He is in the prime of his life. From the mournful croon of FRIDAY’s voice, Nebula ascertains his death is a ‘shame’.

 _‘Benjamin Parker will die in approximately three weeks without intervention,’_ FRIDAY tells her as he fixes her arm. Nebula watches him close up wiring and loop feedback processors back into her system. So far, he has only made three errors out of seventy-four. Peter watches closely from the arm of the sofa, behind his uncle, passing him implements and occasionally, beverages.

“A car just pulled up outside,” May says from the window, tense. Ben pauses in his ministrations, before keeping on. May crosses her arms, eyes glued to the sidewalk. “It’s Tony Stark.”

Peter perks up. “Really?” The boy scurries across the room, speed surprising considering he is as-of-yet unaltered. Nebula watches him lean out of the rectangular gap, May pulling him back in fright when he erroneously balances too far. Peter’s arm shoots out – he waves. “Hi Mr Stark!”

“ _Hey buddy!_ ” Stark calls back, his familiar cadence lifting a weight off of Nebula’s shoulders. “ _You the kid with the crazy robot lady?_ ”

“Yeah! Her name’s Nebula! She’s yours, from the future!”

Nebula’s lip twitches. Ben chuckles at the behaviour of his nephew, running a grease-stained hand under his flat nose. He leaves a trail of light grey.

“Peter, why don’t you run down and let the man in, yeah? Mr Stark ain’t got no reason to be shouting up six stories.”

“On it!”

Peter dashes out the room, May tilting her head to watch again. Nebula looks to her arm, judging the rewiring to be good enough for now.

“That is enough,” she says to Ben. “Your work will suffice.”

“Let me get this last bit here.” His eyes flicker up. “You don’t want to be sparking. I don’t know about the future, but most things aren’t fireproof, here.”

“The future is worse than now,” Nebula says. Ben and May glance at each other, worried and outside, Peter’s voice gets louder and louder as he chatters on to Stark about his science project regarding volcanic eruptions. When they enter the apartment, Nebula watches Stark like a hawk.

The inventor lowers his shades, peering at her.

“So,” he starts. “You’re the girl from the future. Gotta say, future-chic is trashy.”

“I have no need to be fashionable, only practical.” Nebula disagrees, “Trends vary from planet to planet, anyway.”

“So, you’re an ET, too?”

Nebula stands, facing the young version of her mentor stiffly. In her head, FRIDAY cheers for joy. “I am more machine than luphomoid, but I hold one of your creations in my data-core. Her name is Friday and she wishes to speak to you.”

 _‘Tell him I want to meet JARVIS,’_ FRIDAY insists.

“She would like to meet Jarvis,” Nebula repeats.

Stark’s eyes go wide, his sunglasses slipping off his nose as he startles. “What? She wants to meet J? What happened to Jarvis in the future?”

 _‘He was eaten by another AI affected by an Infinity Stone; he took his core programming too seriously. Unfortunately, Ultron was also my brother,’_ FRIDAY says, with a measure of distance up until her final words. _‘I was JARVIS’ replacement.’_

Nebula tells Stark as such.

“How many AI’s do you _have?_ ” Peter queries, fascinated and star-struck. Stark, shaken from her news, looks to Ben.

“Can I sit down?” he asks, faintly. Ben nods.

“Pull up a chair. You look peaky.”

“I just found out my kids kill each other – if I don’t look ‘peaky’, then I really am insane,” Stark trudges past her, collapsing on the sofa where she had been sat. He looks around. “Nice place you got here. Well, nice – _small._ Rumours have been flying. Petey here is my future intern, or something? I should give you some money, get him a good education before that happens again. Maybe he’ll be up to par sooner.”

“I can still be your intern?” Peter asks, practically jumping on the spot. Nebula wonders at the fact that children can contain so much energy.

“Pete,” Ben starts, sending him a look that has him standing still. The man looks to Stark. “Would you like to stay for dinner, Mr Stark? We usually get take-out on Tuesdays.”

“Sure,” Stark says blithely. “On me. What are we having?”

May shakes her hand slightly, getting Nebula’s attention. “Can you eat Earth food?” she asks, the room quieting as everyone looks to Nebula.

“I…” Nebula starts, swallowing nervously. “I eat Chinese takeaway. Pizza is strange and I don’t like it.”

“What? How are you my kid, if you don’t like pizza?” Stark complains, motioning her over. “Let me take a look at that arm.”

Nebula lets him, standing at his side. He chatters on to Ben and Peter while May stays on the sidelines, reserved about the whole affair. Nebula stares at him. This Tony Stark does not waver at the thought of her being _his_ , as Peter has implied – as _she_ implied, to be fair. Nebula does not know his feelings on _children_ , at this point in time. He once told her, as a joke, that he collected them. It had struck home just how bad a father that Thanos was, to her and her sister.

Take-out is ordered. Her arm is rebuilt. Nebula listens in silence as Tony inquires about Peter’s fancy middle school and Ben’s work. The human male is a mechanic and lives the ‘simple life’, which doesn’t compare to the ‘simple life’ Nebula witnessed Tony live, in the future. The Parker’s are working class – living in the gap between _middle class_ and _poverty_.

 _‘Approaching hostiles,’_ FRIDAY then tells her, zipping from the phone to the data-core. _‘They have electro-magnetic pulse devices.’_

Nebula pulls out of Tony’s grasp, causing him to drop his mini toolkit in surprise.

“Hey, stay still, Plavalaguna-”

“We have to leave,” she interrupts him, “There are enemies coming.”

Tony’s face shutters. It is strange and different – a _bad_ different. He does not look world-weary and tired, but almost darkly _excited_ , coming alive.

“How many? FRIDAY on the net?”

_‘The complex next door has security cameras. I saw them entering the building. You have seconds.’_

Relaying this inspires fear from the Parker’s, whom Tony orders into Peter’s bedroom with a shotgun from behind the fridge and May’s scalpels, stolen from work.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t see those when the police get involved,” jokes the inventor, before Nebula discards her _I HEART NYC_ hoodie and snarls at the door, readying her weapons. Tony stares at her swords. “Space is medieval?”

“These swords were forged by the dwarves of Nidavellir in the ancient past, gifted to my sister when she came of age,” Nebula grits her teeth, hearing their pounding feet as the hostiles approach. In her data-core, FRIDAY counts down to their estimated time of arrival.

At _zero_ , there is nothing but silence.

Then, the door is smashed in and Nebula charges.


End file.
